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The post agrarian nuclear family, popularized by shows like Father Knows Best in the 1950s and 60s, may not be sustainable in today’s economy. Sociologists and social historians have long said that marriage and the Mom, Dad and the kids arrangement is quite recent. In fact, it was not long ago that a significant percentage of siblings did not marry at all. In today’s America, it is getting increasingly difficult to go to college, buy a home and settle down and raise a family. Today’s young people are struggling to get jobs and parents are staying put in their homes well after retirement… Perhaps it is the baby boomers leading these trends. Ironically, just like they made noise for their elders and their parents in the 1960s, so too are their children today as they are crowding their nests and spending their life savings… Empty nest syndrome is being replaced with a new, perhaps more uncomfortable version of the extended family… At least extended at the bank as families struggle to face a new reality in an economy that undervalues education and yields few jobs and opportunities for the baby boomers “boomies” …

“In 2012, 36% of the nation’s young adults ages 18 to 31—the so-called Millennial generation—were living in their parents’ home, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. This is the highest share in at least four decades and represents a slow but steady increase over the 32% of their same-aged counterparts who were living at home prior to the Great Recession in 2007 and the 34% doing so when it officially ended in 2009.

A record total of 21.6 million Millennials lived in their parents’ home in 2012, up from 18.5 million of their same aged counterparts in 2007. Of these, at least a third and perhaps as many as half are college students. (In the census data used for this analysis, college students who live in dormitories during the academic year are counted as living with their parents).

Younger Millennials (ages 18 to 24) are much more likely than older ones (ages 25 to 31) to be living with their parents—56% versus 16%. Since the onset of the 2007-2009 recession, both age groups have experienced a rise in this living arrangement.”

Wonderful article from the NYTs on child prodigies! The article is a wonderful overview of the parenting experience and how a child’s “difference” presents unique challenges in the parenting experience for good and bad …

The educational system and our own ability to deal with outliers is an obstacle to human progress and perhaps love itself…

Read this article today to enrich your perspective on raising kids or perhaps on how you were raised yourself…

“Drew Petersen didn’t speak until he was 3½, but his mother, Sue, never believed he was slow. When he was 18 months old, in 1994, she was reading to him and skipped a word, whereupon Drew reached over and pointed to the missing …”

More than three-quarters of young adults ages 25 to 34 who have moved back home with their families during the Great Recession and the troubled economic years that followed say they’re satisfied with their living arrangements and upbeat about their future finances.

Those arrangements have benefited their parents as well: almost half of boomerang children say they have paid rent and almost nine-in-ten have helped with household expenses.

One possible byproduct of the economic challenges today’s young adults face may be shifting societal norms about when adulthood begins. When asked what age children should be financially independent from their parents in a 1993 survey, 80% of parents said children should be self-reliant by age 22. In a survey conducted in December 2011, only 67% of parents (with children age 16 or under) say their children have to be financially independent by age 22.

Among all adults, regardless of parental status, a clear age pattern emerges.. A solid majority of young adults (66%) believe children should be financially independent by age 22 (including 23% who say they should be supporting themselves by age 18. By contrast, among those ages 50 and older, only 44% say children should be financially independent by age 22; a narrow majority (53%) don’t think financial independence is mandatory until age 25 or older. On this issue, adults ages 35 to 49 are closer aligned to their their younger counterparts than to adults ages 50 and older. Read more

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Pediatricians fed up with parents who refuse to vaccinate their children out of concern it can cause autism or other problems increasingly are “firing” such families from their practices, raising questions about a doctor’s responsibility to these …

A lot of people have asked me whether I still “tiger mom” my older daughter, Sophia, now that she’s in college. Do I block sleepovers from afar, drill her on schoolwork remotely, monitor piano practice by Skype and make sure that she never watches …

Breaking from the great American journalistic tradition of speaking truth to power, the San Francisco Chronicle publishes this cutesy puff piece on the most powerful man in the world: “President Obama spent only a few hours in San Francisco on Tuesday, but he took just seconds to prove once again why he’s the baby whisperer.” It seems that when the president arrived at the airport, he “spotted 6-month-old Josie Knight, who was crying while being held by …

When I was 8, my mom gave me a self-esteem bear. It told me I was great.

So I could relate to the recent New York Magazine article called “The Kids Are Actually Sort of Alright.” It’s a thoughtful millennials’ manifesto, written by one, which examines, among other things, existing in a chilly world after a childhood of warm …

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